Cain Food Industries Inc. obtains improved lot traceability and function-rich formula module
Customer
Cain Food Industries, Inc.
Industry
Food Manufacturing
Solution
BatchMaster with SAP Business One
Today, consumers demand and enjoy a food supply that is flavorful, nutritious, safe, convenient, colorful, and affordable. The use of appropriate food additives/ingredients, coupled with technological advancements, help make that possible. The use of food ingredients in our food goes back many centuries. In the past, salt was used to preserve meat and fish, herbs and spices were added to improve flavor, and fruit was preserved with sugar. Many of those techniques are still in use today. There are literally thousands of food ingredients which are used in a variety of foods to maintain or improve safety, freshness, nutritional value, taste, texture, and appearance. Vitamins and minerals (and fiber) are added to many foods to makeup for those lacking in our diet or lost in processing or to enhance the nutritional quality of a food. Spices, natural and artificial flavors, and sweeteners are added to enhance food taste. Emulsifiers, stabilizers, and thickeners give foods the texture and consistency consumers expect. Leavening agents allow baked goods to rise during baking. Some additives help control the acidity and alkalinity of foods, while other ingredients help maintain the taste and appeal of foods with reduced fat content.
Cain Food Industries, Inc., founded in 1971, is based in Dallas, Texas. They produce and supply micro-dose ingredients for the wholesale and retail baking industries. They offer enzymes for baked goods and crackers; oxidation and bromate replacements; emulsifiers for tortillas, flatbread, pan bread, buns, and rolls; conditioners; and mold inhibitors for cakes, pies, and fillings. Many of these ingredients belong to a new category of “Clean Label Ingredients,” specially formulated to reduce the number of ingredients on food labels to make them more appealing to consumers. The “Clean Label” challenge is to replace artificial colors and additives(many of those ‘E’ numbers on labels) with natural ingredients. Cain Foods is a leader in this movement and is well known in the food industry for its superior quality, unique product line, and highly trained, experienced sales team receptive and responsive to customer problems. Their customers are wholesale and retail baking industries in the United States and other parts of the world, like Canada, Asia, and Africa.
Cain Food Industries, Inc. is an aggressive, technically oriented company emphasizing quality and customer service. Before acquiring BatchMaster Manufacturing for SAP Business One, they used Process-Pro to run their business operation. They often encountered problems in lot traceability, an essential requirement of their customers who need this information for regulatory compliance, recalled Tom McCurry, Exec. V.P. – Sales & Marketing. Due to the lack of availability of real-time information on inventory and finance, it was very difficult for them to assess their current status and make the best use of the available inventory. In addition, they had to spend considerable time in calculations for their formulas. Their formulas are based on the bioactivity of enzymes, one of their main raw materials, and its bioactivity, which varies from lot to lot. To remain competitive in the current challenging economic environment and to retain and expand its customer base, which demands food ingredients in compliance with regulatory requirements, Cain Foods decided to search for an affordable software solution that could satisfy these needs. After researching several available options, they found BatchMaster Manufacturing for SAP Business One to be the best option.
BatchMaster Manufacturing for SAP Business One was a fully integrated application with newer technology equipped with comprehensive reporting, batch tracking, and yield management functionality. Additionally, this ERP software provided trustworthy historical information they could count on and fulfilled FDA compliance requirements of traceability.
Implementation began on April 1, 2011, and was finished in four months. Cain Foods went live on August 1, 2011. After a very successful implementation and its use for 8-9 months, Tom McCurry said that he was pleasantly surprised with the swift implementation of not only BatchMaster Manufacturing for SAP Business One but also of the required customizations by the BatchMaster implementation team. He was highly appreciative of the proficient, professional, and cooperative attitude of BatchMaster’s personnel. He said BatchMaster, in addition to providing the expected solutions for which they purchased it, has offered outstanding features that are used by them daily to run their business. Specific features of BatchMaster Manufacturing for SAP Business One, which improved their business operation and had a positive financial impact, include:
Inventory
- Real-time access to available inventory, along with lot traceability, has translated into making the best use of available resources and increased returns.
- They use different measurement units to purchase raw materials and manufacture finished products. BatchMaster's efficient unit conversion module eliminated calculation errors, and saved valuable time.
Formulation
- Ease of creating new formulations. Cain Foods often creates new formulas to customer specifications and tests and approves them. BatchMaster's Laboratory module allows them to design formulas to nutritional values and other physical properties. Also, it allows them to search their existing formulas for those that most closely match those new customer specifications.
- Formula costing: They can now monitor and accurately calculate overhead costs of pricing formulas.
- Maintenance of revisions, modifications, and history formulas.
- They can now associate manufacturing instructions and text with their formulas.
- Automated batch number generation.
- Generation of pick list by the software for issuance of raw materials for manufacture.
Lot Strength
- Cain Foods calculates the Lot Strength of enzymes before using them for manufacture. BatchMaster's advanced lot strength feature has proved very useful, as it automatically calculates the required amounts of different ingredients used in the formula based on enzyme bioactivity.
Manufacture
- Substituting unavailable raw material with pre-approved substitute material during manufacture.
- Partial close batch functionality to deliver urgently required finished products to satisfy
Real-time updates of raw material / intermediate material/intermediates / finished goods before and after manufacture has resulted in positive financial consequences and proactive decisions based on accurate information.
Quality Control
- Cain Foods performs quality control of raw materials (enzymes) before they can be issued to production and of intermediate and finished products before they can be shipped. The strong quality control module of BatchMaster, with a wide variety of options, has been of great use inmoving material according to good manufacturing practices.
- The lot traceability feature of BatchMaster has provided them with enough confidence that they can perform a lot of recalls in record time. They were doing Mock Recalls every six months (Finished Goods were recalled, with drill down to the contributing raw materials).
Packaging
- With BatchMaster software, they can track their packaging materials and ensure their availability when required.
- Access to the USDA database and printing labels required for the finished goods has become much easier.
In summary, Tom McCurry concluded that they were completely satisfied with BatchMaster Manufacturing with SAP Business One and were looking forward to using its advanced features, such as Master Production Scheduling (MPS), Material Requirements Planning (MRP), business intelligence, and BatchMaster Data Collection for wireless tracking of inventory movements, to improve the way they manage their business even more
About BatchMaster
BatchMaster Software is a leading provider of ERP solutions that help emerging and growing formula-based manufacturers streamline their operations and scale production while reducing costs and complying with changing customer demands and ever more stringent regulatory mandates. The company delivers industry-specific solutions for Food, Beverage, Nutraceuticals, Pharmaceuticals, Cosmetics, Chemicals, and other process industries. BatchMaster ERP is seamlessly embedded within SAP Business One, providing a comprehensive process manufacturing solution that is available on-premise and in the cloud. BatchMaster Software has served the process manufacturing market for over 30 years and supports thousands of customers worldwide.
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BatchMaster Software | 9861 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine, CA 92618 | 949-583-1646 | sales@batchmaster.com
